Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Artisan Edition

If you were to purchase one of the few copies of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1, it would probably cost you at least a few hundred dollars – if not more. Thankfully, this comic book has been reproduced several different times, so it’s not impossible to get your hands on TMNT history if you’re looking for a copy to read. That being said, few of the reproductions have been completely accurate recreations of the original comic.

Until now, one of the closest representations we’ve received has been in the form of the Ultimate Collection from IDW, but even that wasn’t perfect. Rather than recreating the original comic book as it was, they gave us high quality prints of the first 7 issues. This isn’t exactly how the comic looked or felt when it first hit the streets, so it might not be exactly what some fans want to see. Thankfully, IDW has finally decided to give the first issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles royal treatment with what they call an “Artisan Edition.”

What is the Artisan Edition? We’ll let them explain it for us:

“This book reproduces all the original art to the first issue of one of the most important comic book phenomenons of the last 35 years — The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Scanned directly from the original art, mimicking the experience of the original hand drawn page, and also collecting all the layouts (also hand drawn) by the creators of what has been called this generation’s Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.”

In addition to fully recreating the original comic book in style, they’ll also provide a lot of extra material related to the creation of the franchise. At a price tag of around $50, this isn’t going to be cheap, but it will be more affordable than obtaining one of the few remaining copies of the real thing. Considering that the Artisan Edition will be filled with tons of additional content, that’s actually a pretty good deal. Currently, it’s available for pre-order on Amazon with a planned release date of May 30th, 2017.

Will you be picking up the Artisan Edition of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1? Are you happy to see IDW taking this approach with some of their classic comics? Share your thoughts either in the comments below or on facebook/twitter.